catherine.austen@futurenet.com
@cfausten123
OF all the countries of Europe, none offers a more varied landscape than mainland Britain. From the High Peak or Holcombe Harriers, you can look to the distant “Satanic Mills” of the industrial Midlands and, nearer by, the unique managed heathland habitat of moorland grouse. Sussex has its Downs, Exmoor its majestic stags and Leicestershire its gently graded open fields of corn, pasture and laid coverts.
For those who have hunted all their lives in such places, the rewards and respect for community, land and idiosyncratic rituals, are immeasurable. And in the way that no two hunting countries are the same, nor are their people who carry with them the folklore and memories of sportsmen past.
Who are, then, these longterm hunting residents who’ve taken their landscape to their hearts? Claire Bellamy, having been brought up hunting on Dartmoor, is now in her ninth season as sole master and huntsman of the Lauderdale in Scotland.
“Even if I was not hunting, I would not want to live anywhere else,” says Claire.
From the first day, with her partner Adrian Ross, she says she
